Dorian, a bright, forceful young dreamer, drops out of high school on Chicago's notorious Old West Side, a victim of dyslexia. They were called then simply dummies. And an angry Dorian's quickly falling in with other defiant dropouts, many violent, roaming the dark back streets of the West Side, taking crap from nobody. Gradually, they end up hanging out at "Dominic's" infamous, dim lit pool hall, where no less than Al Capone's brother often flashes fistfuls of hundreds, during tense all night poker games. And Dorian, before even reaching twenty, goes unquestioning on daring bank robberies, extortion schemes and burglaries until that awful, inevitable moment arrives. He's ordered to murder somebody!
A surge of decency, though, rushes up in him and he goes running for his life aboard a bus speeding to New York, leaving the Mafia starkly behind him. And weird as it sounds, he's choosing New York cause that's where the writers are. Though he can't even read, what he's lived through is so overwhelming he's just mad to tell this mind-blowing tale. And soon he's living in the excitement of Greenwich Village among its poets and professors, criminals and socialites, finally moving in with a daring young woman, Ana Macalester, where he begins struggling maniacally on and on, learning to read then incredibly to write until his thousands of ill-gotten dollars runs out, leaving him utterly broke. Though absolutely knowing better, he insolently takes a 15,000 dollar loan from East Side Frankie, the loan shark. And now, yes, Dorian's dealing with the mob again but in such an amazing, striking way, it won't let you put down this book for a moment.